Any Vacation Rental Owners (with Multiple Units) Out There?

[Brandon Turner]

I'm looking to potentially write an article on vacation rentals and would love to talk with some folks about their experiences with vacation rentals. If this is you, jump in this thread and let us know a brief version of your story, or send me a PM! 

[Catherine W.]

Hi Brandon-

We turned our primary residence in Columbus, OH into a vacation rental about a year ago kind of by accident. At the beginning of 2014, we started to focus on reducing our student loan debt, and in because of that, wanted to increase our income to speed up the process. We decided to list our house on Airbnb and Homeaway/VRBO, thinking that if we could make a little bit each month, it would be an easy way to make extra cash with a small time commitment. Well, our gross earnings ended up averaging 4x our monthly mortgage payment (including PMI, property taxes, and insurance). We were shocked that there was such a steady stream of visitors in Columbus! After hearing guests' feedback, we know we can attribute most of our beginners' success to the location of the house (walking distance to shops, restaurants, Ohio State, convention center, etc.) coupled with our décor choices.

In terms of expenses above and beyond a normal rental, the highest are utilities (gas, water, electric) and cable, which run us roughly $200-450/month depending on the time of year.  Smaller costs are things like buying new towels/sheets every 4-6 months, and getting small welcome gifts for our guests.  In terms of cleaning, we have tried to do the majority of it ourselves, although we did hire someone to help us in the summer when we got really busy.

For the first 6-8 months of doing this, we would stay in hotels or with family when guests came.  We don't have children yet so we had that flexibility, and the bookings were not frequent enough to justify buying another place.  By spring/summer when things really picked up, staying in hotels started to get difficult, so we bought a duplex in an up and coming neighborhood that we're fixing up.  We'll live on one side and rent out the other (standard rental, as the area most likely wouldn't be attracting vacationers) until our next opportunity presents itself.

A lot of people told us that we were crazy for using our home as a vacation rental.  But to us, it was such a [relatively] easy way to make extra cash compared to getting a second job.  And what's interesting is that we've found 99% of our guests to be super respectful of the house.  We're very clear from the get-go about our house rules, so we tend to attract guests who are on the same page as us.

We hope to increase our earnings in 2015, now that we have a solid set of reviews and have had some experience with it.